As bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies get increasing attention from investors, Wall Street and its traditional banks continue to adjust to the shift. Catch up on this week’s top stories highlighting the intersection of these old guard and new school areas of finance with this recap compiled by The Fly: 1. JPMORGAN MULLS BITCOIN ACCESS FOR CLIENTS: JPMorgan (JPM) is considering whether to offer its clients access to CME Group’s (CME) planned bitcoin product through its futures-brokerage unit despite CEO Jamie Dimon previously calling the cryptocurrency a fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The bank, which is assessing whether there is demand for the product, would be able to collect fees on services including customers placing bets on the digital currency. JPMorgan may decide not to offer the service and the launch of CME’s bitcoin futures is still subject to regulatory approval by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Morgan Stanley (MS) is also mulling offering clients access to the products. 2. NOVOGRATZ, FUNDSTRAT, STANDPOINT TARGETS: Hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz predicted that Bitcoin will end the year at $10,000 and smaller competitor Ether is likely to close $500, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Novogratz, who is in the midst of raising a $500M crypto fund, compared Bitcoin to digital gold saying, “Gold has value solely because people say it has value; bitcoin is built on an amazing technology, there’s a limited supply of it…This whole revolution came out of a breakdown in trust in the 2008 crisis.” Meanwhile, Fundstrat’s Tom Lee raised his mid-2018 price target for bitcoin to $11,500 from $6,000, forecasting a roughly 40% upside to its current level, CNBC reported on Wednesday. Lee is bullish on the digital currency as he predicts strong growth in the number of bitcoin accounts and transaction dollar volume per account. On Monday, Standpoint Research analyst Ronnie Moas raised his 2018 price target for bitcoin to $14,000 from $11,000. At the time, the price just crossed $8,180 and was split-adjusted at $9,518 when the August fork spinoff bitcoin cash and the October fork spinoff bitcoin gold at $158 was factored in. The analyst sees the price of bitcoin hitting $60,000 in five years, which he reached by forecasting that 0.5% of the global total money invested currently in cash, stocks, bonds and gold will shift into the cryptocurrency. 3. TETHER HACK: Bitcoin fell as much as 5.4% after Tether, a digital currency used by bitcoin exchanges to back trades with fiat currencies, disclosed that a hacker had stolen $31M in tokens from its Tether Treasury Wallet on Nov. 19, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The company, which is working to prevent the coins from being used, said a “malicious” actor removed the tokens and sent them to an unauthorized bitcoin address. Bitcoin, which exceeded the $133B value of McDonald’s (MCD) over the weekend, quickly recovered following the hack and erased its loss on Tuesday. 4. ETHER HITS HIGH: Bitcoin rival Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, hit an all-time high of $425.55 Thursday breaking its previous record of $414.76, CNBC reported on Friday. Ether, which has increased by over 5,000% since the start of the year, has a market capitalization of over $40B. Meanwhile bitcoin cash, which formed from a split in the original blockchain, also rose going as high as $1,789.05. 5. BITCOIN STOCK PLAYS: Cryptocurrency revenues have been pointed to as reasons to be bullish on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) in select research. PRICE ACTION: As of time of writing, bitcoin rose about 2.4% this week, or $199, to $8,165 in U.S. dollars according to CoinDesk. Meanwhile, AMD shares rose 0.6% to $11.38 this week and Nvidia dropped 0.3% on a weekly basis to $215.47. Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) rose 9.9% this week to $995.00. WANT BITCOIN NEWS ALERTS?: To receive alerts on stories relating to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Fly subscribers can enter “Bitcoin” into the “Add symbols” box of their portfolios.
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